TRACK 13 Staring at the Rude Boys

By the time I defended my dissertation, I was so exhausted by depression and anxiety I could barely function. I just wanted to be a punk musician. That was the only thought that brought me any comfort. After a brief stint in a mental hospital—that’s Dr. Crazy to you—where I was once again improperly medicated and misdiagnosed, I fled east-coast academia and went back to California.

With my PhD in English and American literature, I was working as a telephone psychic and writing anti-Taliban songs for RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Located across the border in Pakistan, RAWA provided schools, hospitals, work programs, and food for Afghan refugees and ran secret literacy classes for women and girls inside Afghanistan. But after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration started bombing Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. I’d never thought of freedom as something to be endured before. And suddenly writing songs for Afghan women while I was living in the United States didn’t make sense anymore. When the Patriot Act was passed, curtailing civil liberties, I made sure my passport was valid.

Before being fired from a previous job at a residential facility for schizophrenics, where hearing voices isn’t such a big deal, I’d been reading through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatry’s bible, trying to figure out why I was still suicidal on antidepressants. But the copy in our office was an old version. Then I got hold of the new edition in my never-ending quest to find out what was wrong with me. I’d never seriously considered OCD before because I had none of the stereotypical symptoms. I didn’t wash my hands fifty thousand times a day or freak out if my possessions weren’t all facing in the right direction. I was perennially disorganized and untidy. But with the fourth edition of the DSM, there was more of an emphasis on ritualistic thought, not just behavior, and mental acts counted as much as physical ones. People with OCD could be tortured by endless intrusive thoughts and be compelled to neutralize them by praying every waking minute. Not only time-consuming, it could be completely disabling.

I asked my psychiatrist for Prozac, which wasn’t a cure but was sometimes effective in lessening OCD symptoms. Being the only psychiatrist I’d ever had who actually listened to me and valued my opinion, he gave it to me. And on the tenth day of my new regimen, I woke up and my head seemed strangely quiet. It was as sudden and as simple as that. I still had intrusive thoughts that I had to neutralize, but now I had times when I wasn’t crushed by torpor or anxiety. It might sound ridiculous, but the sky seemed bluer. It was like coming out of an extended coma. I still had trouble falling asleep, but most nights I did sleep eventually. And I was relieved to discover, as I’d always known, that the women in my head didn’t disappear with the advent of proper medication. I couldn’t explain them, but they were not a symptom of mental illness. I still processed my thoughts the same OCD way, but the Prozac had taken a bit of the edge off. Even with the lingering symptoms, I felt better than I had since the year I lived in England. This was a big adjustment, and I felt like I was constantly on vacation from myself. Not in a self-hating way but in a good way. It was like someone had taken a hose and washed off the entire world.

By the time post-9/11 Christmas came around, my throat was sore from yelling at people with American flags waving out of their car windows. “You can take your flag and ram it up your ass!” I screamed inside my car. Nativity scenes were embellished with Christmas lights made into American flags, as though Jesus Christ had been born in the United States. My neighbor had a huge cross on his roof lit up in red, white, and blue, and I was mentally exhausted from having American flags shoved in my face all day long.

People of Middle-Eastern descent were randomly attacked in my town, and I don’t mean my mother on her way home from synagogue. Jews existed in that murky borderland between “at least they’re not Muslims” and “they killed Christ.” I sewed an upside-down American flag on my sweatshirt and scrawled “God Bless Afghanistan” across it, as though I had a death wish. And it was no good thinking I would simply keep my opinions to myself. I’m the kind of person who keeps on talking long after someone with any sense and normal social skills would have shut up. I’d stopped saying the pledge of allegiance as far back as elementary school. And during the Bush regime, I didn’t just refuse to stand for the national anthem. Instead of sitting quietly, I threw myself on the ground and writhed with my arms stretched out in crucifixion position.

I opened up the yellow pages and found the nearest boxing studio.